\nsomething to fill you with confidence on the eve of BP’s risky “Top Kill”
\ngambit: Workers on the Deepwater Horizon
\nrig missed warnings that something was seriously wrong before the rig exploded.
\nBP itself, in a memo to a House committee, reveals that crewmen failed to heed signs
\nof a “very large abnormality”<\/a> <\/strong>underwater. In fact, they apparently missed one warning
\nsign after another<\/a> that day.<\/p>\n
Third time’s the charm?<\/strong><\/p>\n Or will it be three strikes you’re out? Later today, BP will try, try, try And if that<\/em> doesn’t work, well, we’re pretty much screwed<\/a>. Now that the oil giant relented to pressure from That’ll A criminal investigation of BP is gaining And in a ratcheted-up Fox, henhouse … henhouse, fox<\/strong><\/p>\n All of which raises more As when derivatives <\/a><\/p>\n And The Washington Post’s <\/em>Steve Pearlstein says<\/a>, “It’s time for the business community to give up its jihad against regulation.” <\/p>\n It How bad is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n You can now Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Will BP take responsibility, or squeeze profits from Gulf spill?<\/a><\/p>\n Cousteau dives into ‘nightmare’ U.S. oil slick [VIDEO]<\/a><\/p>\n
\nagain to—as the president put it<\/a>—“plug the damn hole.” This latest attempt is the “top kill<\/a>,” in which a mix of
\nheavy mud and cement is shot into the well to counteract the upward pressure of leaking oil and gas. If the top kill fails,
\nBP will move on to the “junk shot,” in which a gumbo of rope, tires, and golf balls
\ngets pumped into the leak. If the junk shot doesn’t work, it’s “top hat” time—the
\nsmaller of the two containment domes will be lowered over the well to hopefully
\ncapture leaking oil and pump it to the surface. <\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nthe feds, we can watch it all go down on the BP webcam<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nshow ‘em <\/strong><\/p>\n
\ntraction. The Justice Department now says
\nit will give “due consideration” to charges by a group of Senate Democrats<\/a> that
\nBP misled the feds about its ability to respond to oil spills in the Gulf of
\nMexico.<\/p>\n
\ncampaign to show he’s pissed, President Obama will announce tomorrow that federal regulators
\nwill stop being soft touches<\/a> when they inspect offshore oil rigs.<\/p>\n
\nstink about a system in which regulators don’t regulate. Maureen Dowd, writing in The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, draws parallels with the
\nrecent banking fiasco:<\/p>\n
\nexperts had to help unravel the derivatives debacle, now the White House is
\ndependent on BP to find a solution to the horror it created. The financial
\ncrisis and the oil spill are both man-made disasters brought on by hubris and
\navarice. <\/em><\/p>\n
\nhardly captures the breadth and depth of these regulatory failures to say that
\nduring the Bush administration the pendulum swung a bit too far in the
\ndirection of deregulation and lax enforcement. What it misses is just how
\ndramatically the regulatory agencies have been shrunken in size, stripped of
\ntalent and resources, demoralized by lousy leadership, captured by the
\nindustries they were meant to oversee and undermined by political interference
\nand relentless attacks on their competence and purpose.<\/p>\n
\nplace bets on which species will be the first to go extinct thanks to the BP
\nspill<\/a>. <\/strong>According to <\/strong>gambling
\nwebsite PaddyPower.com, the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is the odds-on favorite.<\/p>\n
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